He played on the left - He played on the right....

Football fans are routinely portrayed based upon their passion, hero worship, and unwavering support, however, what is often glossed over is their vast capacity to ignore statistics and facts that don’t suit their at times slanted views. Often happy to defame their own team’s players by applying labels and tags, they can be the main instigators behind negative media perceptions.

These labels show their 'fans' to be in the most part, pretty harsh judges. What often strikes me about the whole fan/player relationship is the way in which it can affect a player’s whole career and how they are perceived by not only by other fans, but also by the media and the football world in general.

Once a player is known as lazy, slow, overweight, a poor finisher/tackler/headerer/out of form [delete as appropriate], or even worse the ill fated 'bottler' then they can spend a whole career trying to shift the tag. Given their thirst for stories to fill their pages, once a tag has been banded about the terraces or phone-ins, the media are more than happy to jump on it and spend line after line putting said player on the doc with little or no evidence to back up their accusations. Not only does it fill spaces and set up repeat articles but it also seems to make everyone’s job easy. It becomes the basis for match analysis from the hordes of pundits, for newspapers match reports and player ratings, interviews, and an easy topic for the now endless number of ex-player columnists.

Aiden McGeady loads of talent, fast feet; but lacks the pace, application, and final ball to be a top top player.

Even looking back on his first couple of appearances back in 2003/04 I can recall Aiden outrun several defenders, always available for the ball and prepared to drive the team forward, and indeed lay on goals for his team mates. However the mere implication, backed up in written media would be enough to punish most players a player to a career imprisoned in the SPL with the Scottish Press happy to sit in the public gallery and look on in almost enjoyment.

However, young Aiden, not one to be put off by public perception, utilized the resources available at Celtic and trained hard alongside then fitness mogul GregORY DuPont, and seemed to magic not just an extra yard of pace, but several yards.

Aiden McGeady loads of talent, fast feet; but lacks the application and final ball to be a top top player.

Allied to his new found pace, Gordon Strachan’s system and style placed emphasis not only on Aiden’s attacking prowess but asked him to help out defensively. In order to keep his place in the team, that is exactly what the Celtic fans saw from the young Irish winger, Aiden’s work rate became inescapably part of his game. Between Strachan, DuPont, and McGeady himself, they had reinvented perception of McGeady as the ‘luxury’ player he had been accused of being in the past

Aiden McGeady loads of talent, fast feet, but lacks the final ball to be a top top player.

Aiden (and Nakamura on the opposite flank) became charged with the team’s creative responsibility as Gordon Strachan often opted for two defensive minded centre midfielders and no defenders really adept at stepping into the midfield with the ball. Far too often this left his Celtic team mates expecting miracles from McGeady, when he not only carried the ball 30-40 yards again and again, and was asked to hold possession till his less mobile colleagues made their way to support or go for goal alone. Luckily McGeady took this responsibility on his shoulders and wasn’t found criticising those around him, either on the pitch or in the papers, unlike many other prodigious talents in British football.

Whether he was stuck tight to the touchline or drifted inside it was often from McGeady’s trickery, pace, and skill that many of Scott McDonald or Vennegoor of Hesselink’s goals came from (including a McDonald hat trick V Motherwell where McGeady claimed three excellent assists). Since Aiden secured a regular starting berth; with the exception of the diminutive Scott McDonald, Celtic have played with centre forwards who played much of their game outside the opposition penalty, had he played more with the Larsson’s, Sutton’s, or Hartson’s of this world, I have no doubt at all that his assist levels would have been through the roof.


The reckless labels attributed to footballers often completely disprovable, and are not always negative, with Danny Fox, Edson Braafheid, and Shaun Maloney before them, tagged as set-piece 'specialists'. Granted Maloney has scored a couple of excellent free kicks for Celtic, they were now some time ago, and since his return from Villa he has remained a frequent free kick taker simply because he hasn’t shaken off his label which the stats most definitely disprove. Other classic examples in recent years as bought into by the Celtic fans are - Samaras being lazy (despite the fact he is as regularly found tracking back behind the midfield as he is in the opposition penalty box), Nakamura is a luxury player who Celtic can ill afford to have their players carry (clearly ignoring that even out with his goals and assists - he statically covered more ground on the pitch than any of his teammates), and Artur Boruc last season was overweight and off form (with such an inexperience and mistake laden defence in front of him he consistently kept us in games and made several outstanding saves).

The more you hear any of the above fallacies said, the more it almost becomes accepted as fact. In no way is this a unique phenomenon with Celtic’s fans and players or something that applies only in Scotland, this seems to be universal with football fans everywhere.

The example of this that strikes me every time I see him play is John Terry. Be it the fans, the papers, other managers, or pundits and analysts – we are force-fed the notion the John Terry is not only a great defender but that he is so because of his ‘commanding’ presence. Even opposition accept Terry’s reputation; by the expectation of his commanding presence seem to give him far too much respect and credit and allow him to win tackles, headers, and challenges at times without contest. However I find Terry ambles his way through games, kept right by his far more positionally astute colleagues Carvalho and Ivanovic, (and Ferdinand at International level) as he is dragged out of position and is beaten too easily by often pretty average strikers who have the audacity not to buy into Terry’s fraud.

With McGeady being on the opposite end of the spectrum to Terry in terms of the now media driven views on the negative side of his game, Aiden has fought his own case so well over the past few years that he would certainly be found not guilty off all three charges (pace, work rate, and final ball) if all the evidence was fairly weighed up. The determination he has shown to do this however has even been thrown at the mercurial Irishman as a criticism. Whether down to such individuality as a player ability or his refusal to be bow to the easy decisions, his determination is often spoken of as a unconstructive stubbornness and defiance, and it is true he and former manager Gordon Strachan had their run ins, but looking outside in, McGeady did seem to be treated harshly by Strachan.

I have even read comment in a newspaper about Mowbray mentioning that McGeady was not the cleverest of chaps. This as well as being ludicrously irrelevant to his on pitch activities at Celtic, is quite far from the truth. A straight ‘A’ student until he left school for full time football had even cited Law as an alternative profession had he not made it in the game. In this intelligence and determination he is set aside from the majority of footballers, and on which he will have to utilise to succeed abroad in the Champions League team of Spartak Moscow.

There are those who questioned whether McGeady would have elected for the move to Russia and who now question his mentality to succeed, and while the former shows the young man to be strong willed and brave, only he can go on to prove the latter.